Chapter 371: Age of Iron Armor

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Han's affairs in the Far East gradually entered the income stage,
At the end of July, the Nanyang Army first returned the occupied Halong Bay port area to the French colonial army in Annan. Later, the two sides exchanged prisoners and materials in accordance with the peace agreement.
The Han-French Annan War ended in a compromise. The French colonial army in Annan gained the initiative in Annan and Cochinchina at the cost of thousands of soldiers' casualties and surrender of French Polynesia's sovereignty.
After the lessons of the Annan War, the French government realized that the French colonial forces' strength in the Cochin-Zhina region was not enough to deal with the joint consequences of the annexation of Annan, Cambodia, and Laos.
The Nanyang Army was the first threat to prevent France from establishing an Eastern colonial empire. As the Nanyang Army gradually withdrew from northern Annan, the Manchu court of the Annan kingdom became the main enemy of the French colonial army in Annan.
After losing several vassal states in the border areas of Myanmar and the northwest, the two nations that had the greatest influence on Chinese culture, the Annan Kingdom and the Korean Kingdom, have become the bottom line of the Manchu court.
The Kingdom of North Korea is located on the flank of the Northeast. It concerns the security of the Northeast and the Forbidden City. Unless the Manchu government defeats the enemy, it is impossible for Russia and Japan to occupy North Korea.
The kingdom of Annan is bordered by Yungui and Bagui areas. Through the Annan offshore and Red River routes, the entire southwestern region can be included in the threat. Therefore, in order to maintain the stability of the wealthy southeast and the stability of the southwestern hinterland, the northern part of Annan cannot be excluded. Occupied by the enemy.
The French government's encroachment on Annan, in addition to the need to search for resources in Cochinchina and the deployment of a global colonial strategy, took the Annan Kingdom as a starting point and included Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi into its direct colonial rule or indirect economic colonial rule.
In order to achieve this goal, the French government approached Japan through various diplomatic channels such as Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and attempted to conclude a military alliance with Japan against the government of the Manchurian government, with a view to the French government's annexation of northern Annan. Japan was able to launch a military offensive from another direction and share the military pressure of the Tochikina garrison.
On July 18, 1881, the French Foreign Minister met with Japan's new Minister in France Hou Suga Maodai in Paris, saying: "To deal with the Qing Dynasty, France and Japan have common interests."
We hope to form an alliance with Japan at an early date and take joint military action against China when necessary. To this end, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs also linked this issue with the revision of the treaty of the Eastern Government and expressed his willingness to provide assistance for the amendment of the Eastern Government.
On July 20, Bee Suga Maodai made a detailed report on this in a secret report to Foreign Minister Takashi Inoue. Nothing special, on July 23, 1881, Acting French Minister in Japan, VialCantel, met with Inoue, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, in Tokyo, and reconsidered the issue of the "Japanese-French Alliance" with the treaty of the Eastern Government. Contact and test the intentions of the Dongying government,
He also stated: "The neighbor Qing Dynasty is a stubborn country. It is inadequate and conspiring. Only your country is familiar with China's national conditions and can work together. Considering your country's future strategy for China, open people believe that if you can unite with our country, Joint consultations are beneficial and harmless. As the so-called France and Japan share the same interests, the urgency is equal, which will definitely help the civilization of the East. "
Since July, the French government has approached Dongxuan many times, eager to conclude a military alliance with Dongxuan, in order to impress Dongxuan government,
The French government moved out of the largest wish since the early years of Meiji ’s early years: to modify the inequality issue, in a way that seemed to promise the
points
that the government had especially hoped to entice Dongzhao to enter into an alliance with them to deal with Manchu in the Far East. government.
There is no doubt that this is the diplomatic strategy of the French government. However, this carefully planned diplomatic strategy of the French government was quickly discerned by the Eastern Government.
On July 28, 1881, the East Korean government held a special cabinet meeting to discuss the dispute between China and France over the Vietnam issue and Japan's foreign policy issues.
Although some people in the Japanese government actually advocated to accept the French government's proposal to conclude the "Japanese-French Alliance" and conclude an alliance with France as soon as possible to take common military action against China, this proposal was opposed by most participants.
After the meeting, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Inoue Inoue pointed out in a mediation order to the Minister-in-Residence to Japan, Hou Suga Maodai: "The French government believes that Japan and France have common interests on the so-called patriarchal issue advocated by the Qing government.
The French government wants to understand both the Chinese government ’s intentions for the Tokyo (Northern Beibei) incident and the points that the Chinese government particularly hopes for in the amendment of the article. On the one hand, the French government must help our country to achieve our long-cherished wish, but on the other hand He also hoped that China would use the Tokyo incident as an opportunity to enter into an alliance with France in order to deny the patriarchy of the Qing Dynasty. According to this speculation, this is nothing more than French strategy. "
Therefore, Bian Shangxin further pointed out: "After the Ryukyu incident in recent years, Japan and the Qing have argued over the Korean issue, and the Qing government's resentment against China has deepened.
My government should have tried to preserve peace in the East, but the current incident has nothing to do with our country. For example, because of the distant "Tokyo Incident, a blatant alliance with a Western country, it will certainly make the Qing Dynasty more angry. Think about it, currently we cannot easily agree with the French proposal, and we cannot publicly expose the" Tokyo Incident "to confront the Qing Dynasty. intention.
Regarding the joint action of Japan and France, please note that although our government cannot publicly agree, it can privately support France's claims and attack the Qing ’s patriarchalism until Qing Dynasty is willing to give up. Please convey this intention to the French government. . "
Of course, the East Korean government did not reject the French Alliance's request because it was worried about the damage to the peace in East Asia. The main reason why the East Korean dignitaries such as Inoue Ino quickly reached an agreement on the Annan issue is because of the contrast between the naval forces of China and Japan. Significant changes have taken place.
After the incident in Taiwan in 1874, the Eastern Government ordered three new warships in the United Kingdom in May the following year: Fuso King Kong and Billy. Fuso is a central artillery armored ship with a displacement of 3777 tons. It has a speed of 13 knots and is equipped with 4 240 mm artillery, 2 150 mm artillery, and 4 120 mm artillery. In 1878, these three warships were in service one after another, making the Dongbei Navy overnight The rise in the Far East has formed an absolute advantage over the Qing navy.
And in the same year that Japan ordered the three ships, Li Hongzhang also ordered 4 warships from the British Armstrong Company. These were the 4 mosquito gunships (also known as Long Ying, Huwei, Feiting, and Cedian) Randall gunboat).
In 1878 when three ships such as Fuso were installed, Li Hongzhang ordered four mosquito gunships from the United Kingdom, namely Zhenbei, Zhennan, and Zhenxi Zhendong. In addition to the town side and middle town purchased by Shandong Province, the Fusheng and Jiansheng purchased by Fujian, the Jinzhang self-made by Jiangnan Manufacturing Administration, the Haidong Xiong imitation copied by Guangdong and Guangxi, and the purchased Haijing Qing, the Qing court has a total of 15 ships Ant Cannon Ship.
The so-called mosquito gunship belongs to a new concept warship of the 19th century. Its basic feature is a cannon mounted on a boat. The mission is to defend the port as a mobile water turret, so the tonnage is small and the speed is slow, which is only suitable for activities in shallow offshore waters.
In terms of the aforementioned 15 mosquito gunships, in terms of tonnage, the smallest such as Jinyu is only 195 tons, and the largest such as Zhenzhong, Zhenbian, and Haidong Qing are only 440 tons. In terms of speed, the slowest such as Haidong There were only 7.5 knots in the Qing Dynasty, and the fastest ones such as Liuzhen and Jinyu were only 10 knots.
However, they were equipped with powerful main guns. The 11-inch guns of Longying and Huwei achieved a breakthrough of 326 mm iron armor at a distance of 274 meters during the test firing. Achievement of 414 mm iron armor penetration at a distance of 274 meters.
Its design purpose is to restrain the enemy's iron armored giant ship with this artillery. This design idea is exactly the same as the collision cruisers, torpedo boats and missile speedboats in the future, both hoping to give play to the advantages of offshore defense and use boats to destroy large ships.
The buyer's mentality is often the pursuit of quick results. I hope to spend a small amount of money, do big things, and find a short cut. In essence, it is the killer thinking.
But cruel facts prove it. The modern navy is a systems project. If only offshore defense. In the era of the revival of land rights, it would be better to build land-based turrets and railways to enhance the mobility of the army.
Once the navy is developed, there will be no navy that can only fight in the mouth. What's more, although the firepower of the mosquito gunship is strong, it is slow, with poor protection, poor gun accuracy, slow fire rate, short effective range, and extremely low actual combat effectiveness.
Especially with the development of machine guns and small-caliber rapid-fire guns, such weapons of mosquito gunships can only launch suicide attacks with a low success rate in front of large warships.
If the enemy launches on the coastline far from the port and conducts a long-distance land attack on the port, the mosquito-saturated ship can only look forward with sighs.
Due to the lack of comprehensive strategic, operational, and tactical consciousness, Li Hongzhang and others have never clearly understood such a fatal flaw in the mosquito gunboat. The reason he stopped buying new mosquito gunships after 1878 is not that he had realized the shortcomings of this weapon, but that the moment UTO bought Fuso, UU read the book www.uukanshu. com Manchu court formed a public opinion that "the East also has iron armored ships."
Iron armored ships, like aircraft carriers of the 21st century, were the world's most recognized warships at that time, and a symbol of great power status.
Under this circumstance, the Qing court quickly formed a consensus to purchase powerful iron armored ships and re-establish the East Asian naval supremacy.
In the case of fierce competition between regional budgets, no matter how Li Hongzhang himself views the iron armored ship, he never wants this large sum of money to fall into the hands of other governors. So, as soon as he found that the central government was willing to pay for the purchase of the armored ship, he immediately acted.
In December 1879, Li Hongzhang ordered two new collision cruisers named Chaoyong and Yangwei.
In December 1880 and May 1881, Li Hongzhang successively ordered two large iron armored ships from the German Volkswagen Shipyard, which are the famous Dingyuan and Zhenyuan. The two armored ships with a displacement of more than 7,000 tons possessed super-defensive power, each equipped with four Krupp 305-mm main guns, which were the largest ships in the Far East at that time.
With Chaoyong and Yangwei being included in the Qing Navy's naval service and the signing of construction contracts for the two ships of Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, Dongying promoted the nation's strength to develop the navy, and the short-term naval advantage obtained by it quickly disappeared under the threat of the Qing's maritime forces However, the East Rim government took an interest in forming an alliance with France and reinvested in the wave of donations to purchase warships across the country.
The arrival of the era of ironclad ships has made all countries in the world have to pay attention to the role of the navy. The naval arms race of the European powers has begun to emerge. In the Far East, the Qing court and the East Asian countries secretly competed for the dispute over the dominance of East Asia. With the stability of the homeland and navy situation, and the early capture of the three Brazilian iron armored ships, all of them will be retired from service. In response to the naval development, the monarchs and officials of the Han Dynasty also launched a big discussion.